SNP – a party that attacks from the left

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There are countless examples of right-wing policies which emerge from the SNP, some intentional (such as cutting corporation tax), some not (such as destroying their own revenue-raising capacity with full fiscal autonomy – a sure precursor of massive cuts).

Whilst this is the fact of how they administrate and would plan to govern, it is certainly not true of their form. There is a big difference between how they look and what they are, which is in itself a big part of how they have achieved political success, adding enough former Labour voters, particularly in working class areas, to their own bloc to win. It is also how they have built their support base of activists so heavily. Their attacks are always rooted in a logic of the left. Continue reading →

Labour’s problems: some structural aspects

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A million people have written a million things about the problems Labour faces, with some quite simplistic responses from several knackered looking leadership contests. The main surface aspects are simple. In polling, we lost certain groups of voters, notably at the older end.

In terms of political geography, we desperately need to win back a lot of Tory voters who used to vote Labour. But we’re also faced with the challenge of winning back a serious number of seats from a party which anyone serious can see has attacked us in the base, and from the left, in order to gain majorities by adding these voters to its previous vote – the SNP. This seems to have warranted far left discussion, in part because our media is right wing and attached to Labour’s own hard right, in in part because the media and what remains of the Labour Party are pretty anglocentric.

But the point is made repeatedly that this malaise is affecting us around Europe and goes deeper than individual elections. Which reminds us immediately of a second coming of Hobsbawm and Hall (as per this and this).

Ludicrously, Liz Kendall warns us against trying to become a Syriza or a Podemos because of the need for electoral success. But in these countries it is social democrats who face eradication for being weak, and too closely aligned to both national and international elites. Hilariously, both of the parties mentioned are great examples of snatching prominence, relevance, and mass support from the jaws of pointless left cultism.

This is not to say that Kendall is wrong in her conclusion – we have very different economies and politics to these countries, which have sharply diverged. But her conclusion is in ignorance of her premise, not based upon it. Continue reading →

Tackling a shift

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CSR2

This graphic is from the Government’s newly announced CSR paper for this November.

We are now at a 2004 level of spending but with slightly lower income. We should be concentrating on raising that income, but the basic point is that our deficit has gone from being at ‘crash’ levels to ‘New Labour’ levels. We are unarguably now at a stage where the social sphere’s share of economic activity is below that of 2004 – indeed, in real terms we crossed that line some time ago – our population is growing.

Objectively speaking, the argument that we now can’t sustain policies like tax credits is of equal value to what the argument that we should abolish them made in 2004. The rest is public opinion. Depending on who you ask.

If public opinion is not prepared to defend those things now but was in 2004, yes we can adapt to that, or challenge it. But first we should be asking if such a political shift has occurred, why, and what we would want to come out of it.

I am disappointed that there is no Labour leadership candidate from the left flank of the party (or even its centre) who is interest in cutting edge analysis and in particular the science of public discourse and opinion.

In my view a materialist left needs to be real enough to engage in questions like this bravely. If we are witnessing this kind of shift, we are certainly seeing one wing of the Labour Party arguing to adapt to that trend and concede to what is essentially a second wave of rightward shifting after the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s. The argument is that we may be defeated forever, but we should see any small adaptations we can make as validating that defeat to the point where we can tell ourselves it is victory. In short, a Dunkirk strategy. But one in which you keep on making the retreat whilst the enemy keeps chasing.

In Blairism, there is no looking beyond a permanent rightward shift. And in jettisoning all concern for the most basic amelioration (i.e. countering child poverty), they can no longer even argue that the most moderate sweetener is there to help the ‘deal’ go down.

In contrast, the left alternately argues that such a rightward shift does not exist, or that it should be countered. It cannot keep its line straight between these two antagonistic arguments, because it is not interested in doing the groundwork to actually find out in the first place. In this sense, there is little reason it should be taken credibly.

The third approach, and what is not being argued, is that the shift exists, should be acknowledged, and that we need to think of imaginative strategies and indeed tactics explicitly to halt or reverse it.

It is increasingly unclear if the ‘hard’ flanks of the party feel they have anything at all in common with each other. Both seem to take this as a badge of pride, which I feel is immature and makes us phenomenally weak against a party which represents all wings of the establishment and shares a common outlook and basis of consent at a very basic level.

Indeed, many on the left fear that such a shared ultimate objective as halting a rightward shift does not exist across the Labour Party (in the way that commitments to things like low taxes for well off people appeal across the whole spectrum of the Conservative Party).

Which is an obstacle for us all. In any event, I would argue that the challenge for the right of the Labour party is to commit to this objective, and to be trusted to do so. Fundamentally this is why Blairites are currently unable to appeal beyond their core. They need to revise.

The challenge for the party left is to commit to being honest with itself, doing some actual original and non-repetitive things in pursuance of changing public opinion, and working with others to make it happen. It needs a good revising too.

Innovation and radicalism in defence of core values (rather than led by George Osborne) is ground that everyone in Labour can stretch to stand on, and it is ground which can win support from both our left and right flanks – the only way to win any future election. It is probably also the only way to hold Labour together and secure any common currency as a movement, even if winning proves to be totally impossible.

Rather than seeing this happen, I suspect I’ll just sit and get pissed off with the TV instead. La lotta continua, and all that.

Fairer representation and recall must become core demands of the left

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There is a strong traditional case for ditching our traditional voting system. Like many British traditions, is basically doesn’t work as the tradition apparently intends.

Whatever people think elections are, constitutionally and objectively they are about picking MPs who are representative in a parliament, which then decides whether to support a given government. It’s more complex than picking a president, and rightly so in my view. It encourages people to think more about what a local representative will do.

As long as we maintain a system of Parliamentary assent and consent, it’s important that those elected to it represent who people want to sit there.

The moral as well as the traditional case is strong, and I think but the mainstream and ‘outside’ left would profit greatly if they argue it.

For me this is not a side note to economic policy, but in the chartist model; it’s an acceptance that the constitutional and the economic cannot be divorced. Continue reading →

The Labour leadership – some initial thoughts

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Wow. What a thumping. There are clearly some exacerbating factors. Our complete collapse in Scotland (and the hammering in England we took for its consequences, unable to change the narrative) being some key ones.

The Blairites are placed in an ideal internal situation by Ed Miliband’s defeat. They are therefore making the running whilst the centre left, having advanced internally over the last decade, are stunned.

So now, people are talking about the leadership contest as if the economy is the only thing that matters.

It does. In particular, how do we create a high growth economy that works with society rather than against it, and protect the life progress that aspirational workers have already made? We had too little to say.

But there are several issues which are considerably more serious even than whether we win next time round, particularly around existential threats and secular decline. Continue reading →

Labour’s challenge and the ‘big lie’ tactic

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There are two very strategic and very effective political ‘big lies’ routinely levelled against Labour.

Both have much wider support of significant sections of the public than they did before 2010, which is interesting, because Labour before 2008 was largely pretty fiscally conservative.

In England and Scotland respectively, each lie has gained significant currency and is playing a large role in the General election. This has been the case for some time – a situation which a hostile media has done as much to stop Labour from rectifying, in both cases, as far as possible. Continue reading →

Dear political hacks: please be more normal

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Maybe it’s because it’s election time, but politics really annoys me these days where it used to inspire me.

It seems to have such a humanity deficit, and often as a starting point, as an accepted norm. There is so little respect for others or behaviour which reflects it. And maybe I’m not cut out for this.

I get so sick of people lacking fundamental human respect for each other, seeing just allies or opponents, looking to use, dismiss or discredit all the time.

There are people stuck entirely in their own bubble, happy not to genuinely engage with anyone else, to deal with the realities of others, to give them the benefit of the doubt, treat them respectfully, or generally credit them with some value.

At senior levels on the left there are terrible employers, and people who other far worse than would be accepted in most of the private sector. This is not to mention the bullying and the sexual harassment.

I know that’s what it’s like. But that’s a shame. Why not do your bit to make it better? Go to the pub. Have friends, political and non. Have other interests. Refer to the real world when you make decisions, and when you’re dealing with other people.

People active in politics should have at least the compassion and decency of those outside hackdom in the ‘real world’ – and they shouldn’t be divorced from it in the first place. This is not to say that my own personality or behaviour are awesome, but basically there is a lot that could be lots better, very easily.

We need to talk about solidarity

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This looks like a massively important piece of work.
One of the chief reasons that the left has spent so long on the back foot has been the retreat among many working class people of values of solidarity – partcularly but not only among workers who are white. Usually in these cases, it has been replaced by resentment, or distrust.

In my view this is often because of the loss of community and workplace insitutions that fostered ideas of solidarity, and the confluent loss of the idea of working class self-education. But the lack of those things stops us building any movement or party able to get them back. Catch 22.

People in pubs and social clubs used to agitate over pints for a welfare state. Now they are far more likely to agitate against health and safety, or working class people who are browner or younger than them.

There are reasons for that loss of ‘solidarity’ and the loss of other left-wing concepts among the people the left are supposed to represent. We need to understand why it has often been replaced by resentment culture. Our bosses and their journalists have been extraordinarily succesful at getting the least well off to find enemies in each other. How, and why?

Labour: ‘grow the offer’!

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Some of the coverage of the recent letter from think tanks and others to Ed Miliband has been typically opportunistic press nonsense.

I’m not sure that the timing of the letter was superb, and the technocratic language feels like hitting yourself with a frying pan. That said, the letter made good constructive proposals, and the general feeling that we should be saying more, and that it should be bold in content.

But there is one very obvious person that it was at least an oblique attack on. Gordon Brown.

Against Brownism

Gordon Brown is a figure who evokes mixed feelings within the Labour Party, and whose legacy is not even considered, bearing in mind the groaning weight of Tony Blair.

Blairites hate him. And a lot of the reason for that, given his behaviour as Chancellor, is understandable. At the same time though, what else would they expect from someone who from was immediately positioned as a leader in waiting.

The left of the party feels a lot more mixed. Many from the soft left in particular were seduced by Gordon as Chancellor, always happy to play to the Polly Toynbee gallery as that slightly-more-left-wing alternative to Blair. Whilst I knew Brown as leader would never be all I wanted, I can’t claim to have been immune to this. It’s what happens when you haven’t had a look in when it comes to policy or personnel for over a decade.

For the whole of the left, the enormity of his moves after tha banking crisis, his initial opposition to all cuts, and his moves to make sure that some of the burden fell upon the richest meant that he still gets a much kinder view . He wasn’t posh, and had been a genuine socialist long before he was elected to Parliament. Less uncomfrotable with attacking the left as a tactic to shore up his support, he was always seen as ‘one of us’ in a way that Blair was not.

The problem is, that has made him harder to encapsulate and deal with in legacy terms, and is has made it difficult to come to conclusions on his supporters. His lack of definition has made it difficult to tell who those people even are, and the bitterness of the split with Blair combined with election defeat in 2010 has made it very difficult to have a debate about style.

That needs to be done. Gordon Brown was not left wing. But he was a centralist.

The standard Gordon Brown response to a problem of public policy was to promise to ban it – carbon emissions are an example of this – but this is nothing more than a glorified target.

The best policies Brownism has brought us were forced on it. But the default mode was ‘centralist and banal’, as was the style. And the style, at least, survives.

Brown’s policies promised were leftward facing but timid as hell and usually boring. You could tell that the inspiration was heavily filtered through the civil service, to the point that it did not relflect real life. Pet Asbos. The ‘right to request’ flexible working (as if there is not right to have a conversation with your bos already).

Gordon, I love and miss you, but I would rather be rid of this.

What about Ed?

One of the areas where Labour needs to do better at the moment is that we seem to rely on announcing the same thing over and over again. The opposition discipline of not forcing your hand does encourage this – but by the same token, we need some equivalents to ideas like ‘sharing the proceeds of growth’.

Part of the issue is that some of the manifesto  process seems tied into the same logic, when actually, as the letter writers state, we should be putting out a load of stuff that is eye grabbing and able to inspire.

What kind of Labour government are we proposing?

I’m a decentralist sort of socialist and I’m keen on seeing this approach taken. More can be done by local councils, and in the economy by trade unions. The NGO and charity sector can be used to save money in the public sector (as one small example, we could save vast amounts of money to the NHS by imrpoving care for Schizophrenia, as outlined by expert charities in the area).

But there is one key point missing from the letter and what Miliband has generated so far, which I think illuminates the key to making the next Labour government (and our offer before it) really radical.

We’ve talked about what Miliband should be offering on htee public sector, but little about what a decentralising approach would look like in the private sector and the ‘real economy’.

Firstly, in the state, how does this match up with things like transport infrastructure and health? What will be done about the aging population or the mounting political injustices experienced by young people? And do we need to seriously refinance local government, perhaps introducing a needs-based model of taxation to fund it? How about returning local control over local schools and health provision?

Secondly, if we’re talking about decentralist socialism, how about freeing up trade unions and putting in place national protocals to help them engage in bargaining with private sector bosses? A great way to redistribute wealth and power if you’re not relying on Government departments.

How about looking at some ways in which government can assist them in recruiting?

What about education for low-paid workers and people in depressed areas of the country? Active citizenship in schools?

For some reason, we only seem to be talking about what happens in the state, rather than the world outside it. The letter is a good start, but without covering half of the economy it cannot fully grasp just how transformative our offer to the public can and will need to be.

Let’s talk about transforming the world of work. Let’s talk about how our population is changing and the new pressures it is subject to. Let’s talk about rebuilding the movement that Labour sits on top of. About control, and ownership. About the rewards we get for being productive, and how the private sector treats us both at work and as consumers.  Let’s talk about how we want the place to look by 2050, not just how we dampen cuts now.

In policy terms, all of the challenges above require us to substantially grow the offer – not to shrink it. And to get noticed against a Government with this many friends in the media, we have to.

America’s insurgent ‘centre-left’?

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Among some centrist Democrats, the response to the rise of the insurgent centre-left has been sputtering rage. In a widely-discussed op-ed published in the conservative Wall Street Journal, the leaders of the neoliberal think tank Third Way (whose very name is a reference to the “Third Way” movement of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair) denounced de Blasio and Warren and warned that “populism” would lead the Democratic party back into the electoral wilderness. But while these sentiments find strong support among Democratic donors in the financial industry and the think tanks they fund, Democratic activists and voters are shifting to the relative left. Like the neoconservatives on the right, the neoliberals on the left may end up as an elite sect, a group that has funding and spokespeople but little or no voter support.

Well, Amen to that.